


the last of the solid people

by carloabay



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Not Spider-Man: Far From Home Compliant, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23785813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: The left behind people, the un-dusted people, the masses in mourning, the last of the solid people."Ned?""Yes?""Don't get your hopes up about Peter. Please."
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Natasha Romanov, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Natasha Romanov, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know this has 2 chapters, but I didn't want to fit it all into one, so I'm saying it's technically a one shot.
> 
> THIS IS NOT SPIDER-MAN: FFH COMPLIANT
> 
> I'm saying May and Ned DIDN'T blip for the convenience of this story :)
> 
> Side note: I love Ned Leeds. Him, Thor and Scott are the purest guys in the MCU and must be protected. (Also Rhodey and my son Joey Gutierrez = unproblematic faves)

May Parker has been by the telephone in the hall all day. It's been ringing off the hook, but not for her; others have been darting down the corridor, snatching up the phone with trembling fingers. She’s seen them gasp with relief and sink against the box, clutching the phone like a lifeline, and she’s wished it was her, listening to Peter’s voice on the other end, heart thudding from the news. She’s seen them crumble and cry and she’s hoped with all her heart that she won’t end up with that weight. Through the entire day, all the deaths, the traffic accidents, the wisping away of the nurse right next to her, the sickening piles of ashes on the floor, through the shock and the terror that she might be next, through all of it, she’s only hoped and thought of Peter. She’s wished and waited and silently begged, on the fitful train ride home, through the ransacking search of their flat for him, the terrified glances out the window every other second. 

At the end of the day, the phone is still ringing and she’s still waiting. The window at the end of the hall throws a grimy sunset onto the floor, and the sound of people crying is the only thing as consistent as the telephone calls. She’s picked all the loose skin off her cuticles. She’s worried her lip till it bleeds. She hasn’t eaten all day, but the grumbling of her stomach is so distant to her it might not even be there. May looks at the phone. It’s not ringing now. This is one of those short intervals that have been getting longer and more silent the longer she’s been waiting. She could call Peter’s school. She snatches the receiver off the hook and punches in the numbers with trembling fingers. She knows the numbers off by heart by now, given the amount of times she’s had to call in and chew out the principal for letting her nephew get punched or bullied or put in detention for something that wasn’t his fault.

The phone trills in her ear. The front desk will be busy. The staff will have gone home. To their families. The staff might all be dead. May twists her fingers into the front of her blouse and tries to keep her nerve as the phone trills again. And again.

“Midtown Science and Technology High School front desk, how can I help you?” The woman on the other end sounds frazzled and on the edge, and May almost bursts into tears herself. She doesn’t. She’s made of stronger stuff than that.

“I’m calling about my nephew, Peter Parker. He was on the school trip to-“

“I’ll see if I can help you, ma’am,” the lady replies wearily. May curls her bitten fingers around the receiver as hold music starts to echo in her ear. Three minutes drag by. Fingernail marks appear on her palm and her fingers cramp around the phone. Someone runs past her with a backpack and thunders down the stairs. The crying continues.

_Have fun, kiddo!_

_Will do! Love you, May!_

_I love you too, Pete._

The hold music clicks to a stop and May’s rib cage seems to bend inwards, stifling her breath.

“I’m very sorry ma’am, I have no record of Mr Parker returning from that field trip. If there’s anything we can do…” May stops listening. Her heart slows and her throat seems to swell like an allergic reaction. The sunset at the end of the hall shines bright, impossibly bright, she clings to the receiver and she forgets to breathe and the floor and the walls blur and her eardrums are numb. Time spins and reels and she's two years younger, listening to the careful tone of the paramedic on the other end as they tell her that her husband is dead.

_I'm very sorry, ma'am._

It's all gone. May finds her movements again and flings the receiver back at the hook. It doesn't catch, just bounces off and hangs on the wire, swinging gently. She backs away dizzily, into the too-bright sunset, tripping over her own heels. Her gut feels like it's been punched into her throat and she takes a gulp of air that doesn't make it to her lungs. It sticks in her throat, lodges itself there. That's where Peter will stay. It's where Ben stayed. They'll stick in her throat together, their lives crumbling over her fingers. Forever together. Forever where she isn't.

_I'm very sorry, ma'am._

_Sorry_ is a beg for forgiveness. _Sorry_ means it's your fault. _Sorry_ is what you say when you break something, when you break someone.

_"Sorry," little Peter mumbled, rounding over his shoulders in shame and sniffling._

_"Did you mean to break it?" Ben asked gently, sweeping the shards of their anniversary vase into the bin._

_"No."_

_"It was an accident?" May asked, already digging in her bag for a plaster and a sweet. She held out her hand and Peter gave her his finger, blood dripping down the length of it._

_"Accident," Peter agreed, as wisely as a seven year old could. May smoothed a curl off his forehead and smiled._

_"Alright, then. You're going to be careful next time, yeah?" Peter nodded. "Good boy. Now be brave." He un-hunched his shoulders, pushed them back, so they could see he was being brave and serious, and May wiped the blood out of the cut on his finger and laid the plaster over it._

_Peter snuffled and May wiped his nose with a fresh tissue and pulled him in for a hug. He rested his head on her shoulder and Ben rubbed his back._

_"All fixed," Ben soothed. "Don't worry about it, Pete. You're forgiven."_

_Sorry means forgiveness. Sorry means fixing. The lady at the front desk can't fix Peter's death. The paramedic can't beg for forgiveness from something that she had no control over._

May stumbles into the apartment, out of the glare of the sunset, throat ragged. Her knees don't function like joints anymore. One is locked and the other is water and she collapses just inside the door, _thud_.

The TV is on. That small, battered machine that Peter dug out of a dumpster and sparked back to life with emphatic encouragement from Ben. It's buzzing from across the room, an outside noise that hooks at from her whirl of numb pain. She tips her head to the side and it goes all the way over, stretching the tendons in her neck. She tucks her knees into the invisible wounds in her stomach, something that feels like knife slashes and gunshots and ashy shock.

"We have no further news on whether Iron Man and Spider-Man have returned from the alien spaceship that hung over New York this morning. Next up, amidst chaos, the President is to make a speech to the citizens of America-" May's head snaps up, the hook of noise winding its way into her brain.

_Spider-Man._

_Returned from the alien spaceship._

No wonder he didn't come back on the bus.

"Peter _Benjamin Parker_ ," she whispers vehemently. "You had me goddamn worried." But the relief doesn't last. The lock-kneed, gunshot, ash-shock pain fades to settle like ice in her stomach when she thinks of him. Alien spaceship. 

_He's alive,_ something whispers inside of her. _Stay strong._ That whisper, that thing inside, that little flame of hope. It sounds like Ben. It sounds like the gasp she made when Peter came back home with his thirtieth black eye of the year, still breathing. Not lying limp in an alley somewhere. It sounds like relief. _He's alive. He's gotta be._

She stands, swallows terror and hope alike. All she's got to do now, is wait.

†††††††††††††††††††††

When Ned looks back over his shoulder, Peter is gone. His seat is empty and the window is swinging open, and Ned's stomach flips. The other kids on the bus are still chattering and pointing at the spaceship, but Ned stares out the window at the weird thing (that looks nothing like the Millennium Falcon, by the way. Come on, really?) and he grabs the nearest headrest and shivers in anticipation instead.

By the time the bus has turned around and is hauling ass away from the massive war machine in the sky, Peter is still gone. Somehow, no one's noticed, but the empty seat behind Ned is kind of a pit in his chest, and even as the spaceship is rising again and everyone's jabbering in relief, Peter is still gone.

They stop for gas an hour later, and Ned chews down his fingernails. Mr Harrington doesn't count the kids, and why would he? They didn't even get off the bus. They're ordered to stay in their seats while Mr Harrington gets off to make a phone call, and Ned's palms start to sweat with worry. Peter's still gone, and so is the spaceship. The ship didn't look friendly, and Ned doesn't want Peter to be inducted into some alien breeding program or to become a space slave or something. MJ throws herself down in the seat next to Ned with force, startling him. He tries to keep his cool.

"What's up?" He says, checking outside. Come on, Peter. MJ squints at him.

"Why are you sweating?" She asks. Ned looks at her.

"I'm not sweating," he says, a beat too late. He adds a suave chuckle on the end, and MJ makes a face.

"Are you nervous?"

"No," Ned says. His voice squeaks. MJ raises an eyebrow.

"Where's Peter?"

"Who?" Ned counters, shoving his hands into his pockets and throwing a careless look out the window. His head jerks and he cricks his neck and he yanks a hand up to rub it but his hand is stuck in his pocket and he ends up doing a weird kind of wiggle to get it out.

"Are you having a fit?" MJ says. "Peter Parker. Only like your best friend in the-" Ned looks away from the window and MJ is gone. Dust flickers in her wake, a lot of it, and Ned flaps a hand at it. That's not gonna be good for his asthma. He stands up, but she's nowhere to be seen.

"MJ?" Other people are standing up too, looking around.

"Hey, where's Carson?"

"Flash? Where'd you go, man?"

"Betty, are you hiding or something?"

"MJ?" He asks again, peering around the edge of the seat. No MJ. The pit in his chest seems to sculp and carve its own way, deeper, worming down to his stomach.

"Will, come on, man."

"Has anyone seen Kamala?"

"Betty, this isn't funny!" The dust settles in a soft little pile on the seat next to him. Where did it come fro-? Oh. Oh, shit. Ned barely suppresses a shriek and scrambles back as far as he can from MJ's remains, throat locking up, vomit rising. He can hardly breathe and he fumbles for his inhaler, pressing himself against the window. Oh, god. He can't even squeeze out a sound. His chest rattles and his eyes are watering in shock and he digs the inhaler out, squeeze, squeeze, b r e a t h e. Ned shuts his eyes, burrows his head away from the pile of ash that used to be MJ, and someone else catches on.

"Oh shit! It's them! They're the ash! Oh, god!" Someone screams. Someone starts to cry. Ned's muscles lock and he freezes in a ball, his jaw clamps shut, he tries to suck air through his nose, oh god, oh god-

He doesn't remember passing out. He wakes up in the school med centre bed, hair sticking to his forehead, somehow short of breath. The room is silent and dark, and for a long time, he can't separate a fitful dream from a terrifying memory. He lies in the darkness, clammy and confused and afraid. His heart is beating a mile a minute and he doesn't close his eyes, for fear of seeing a pile of ash and a massive, sky-blotting spaceship, burned into the back of his lids. Ned stares laser beams into the dim ceiling until his eyes burn. He doesn't manage to form a coherent thought until-

_Peter._

_Peter's still gone._

Ned scrambles upright, a blanket twisting around his waist and his legs. He shucks it off and rolls out of the bed, stumbling on the thin carpet, searching in the dark. His foot hits his bag and he grabs at it, over balancing from panic and exhaustion and sitting down hard on the mattress. He rips open the zip with hurried fingers and snatches around in the dark interiors of the bag for his phone, wishing his tired fingers would move faster. His hand closes around it and he calls Peter on muscle memory alone, without ever even taking his hand from the bag. It starts to ring in his hand and he presses it to his ear, hardly even remembering to breathe. The ringtone loops, again and again. And again. And again. And--

BOOP

"Sorry, I can't come to the phone right now, please leave a message," Peter chirps from the phone. Ned presses re-dial. The ringtone loops. And--

BOOP

"Sorry, I can't come to the phone right-" Ned presses the off button before the recording can finish. The cold phone screen slides from his ear, through his slippery fingers, and thumps onto the mattress. Peter is gone. Ned wraps his arms around himself and stares into the dark. His tongue is too big and too dry and there’s a hole in his chest, a hole that has him juddering and crying and sinking. He lets himself sink. Lets himself drown in fear and uncertainty and grief.

†††††††††††††††††††††

May waits for twenty three days. She goes to work with her phone in her scrubs, she eats takeaway dinner (not Thai. She can't stomach Thai right now) with her eyes glued to the news, she walks through a ghost of a city, past the closed subway tunnels. The emergency room has a skeleton staff and double the patients: car crashes, suicide attempts, drug overdosing.

They call it the Dusting in the ER. They call it the Blip in the scarce newspapers. They call it the Decimation on TV.

She works double time, she works overtime, she barely sleeps and when she does, all she hears is soft, ashy whispers and the sobbing of the bereaved. The ones left behind. The solid people.

_He's alive. He's gotta be._

Support groups spring up all over the place, volunteer run counselling, ads plastered over closed shop signs and black electrical billboards. She goes to none of them, because she hasn't lost him. He's still in space. He's coming home.

She tells herself all that, and yet the ice in her stomach writhes, a certain cold that _knows_ something. 

She gets a call one day on her mobile as she's stepping out of work for a break, it buzzes angrily in the pocket of her coat and she pulls it out, looks at the screen. Ned's mother. She presses 'Return Call' and puts it to her ear, staring at the wall across from her.

"Mrs Parker?" A trembling voice echoes from the other end, shocking May into silence. When she finally finds her voice, it's a little cracked.

"Ned," she replies softly. All at once, guilt breaks over her conscience like an ill-welcomed wave, guilt at never having called the poor boy, never having checked up on him, never having told him of any chance that Peter might still be alive.

"H-how are you?" That question circulates only carefully now, you never know who'll break just with those words. May's response has been _I'm getting along_ for a few days now, because she finds that she's lying when she says _okay_ or _fine_. She doesn't want to lie now, but she doesn't want Ned to feel worse than he sounds now.

"I'm doing alright, Ned," she replies. "Do you need me to come round?"

"I- No, Mrs Parker, thank you." His voice is still trembling, like he's stuck in the stage before a panic attack. "I was just wondering if you knew anything about Peter?" May's heart seems to invert itself.

"What do you mean?" She asks, a little breathlessly. There's a silence from the other end of the phone and she winces. She doesn't want to push the poor kid. He sounds like he saw a bus full of schoolchildren die. Her stomach sinks when she realises that might even be the case. The poor boy could have PTSD.

"He didn't come back on the bus," Ned says. "He didn't- he didn't come back. He didn't-"

"Ned, honey, it's okay," May soothes, cutting off his nervous babbling. He sounds like he's about to actually have a panic attack, and he might well be. "He didn't come back on the bus with you, I know. Have you watched the news recently?"

"N-no. My mom, my mom, my mom says I shouldn't. Shouldn't watch-"

"Okay," May says gently. "I don't want to alarm you Ned, but I have some very weird news, okay?"

"Okay," he whispers back.

"Peter was seen, as Spider-Man, going up in the air and onto the spaceship. The news says he still hasn't returned." Just saying it out loud makes the ice in her stomach curl, makes it curl around the little flicker of hope she had, and try to squash it. Ned doesn't answer for a very long time, and May stands in the lobby with the phone to her ear and waits for him. And waits.

"Okay," he mumbles, after what seems like hours. "Okay. Okay. Th-thank you, Mrs Parker." He sounds like he's shivering, like his teeth are chattering.

"Is your mom there, Ned?"

"She's upstairs."

"Okay. Get some rest, will you? Don't stress yourself out, just rest for a while. Remember to eat, okay? Stay with your momma."

"Yeah…" he agrees. "Thank you."

"That's quite alright. And Ned?" She hesitates. She doesn't want to say it, but most of all she doesn't want to hear it, not from herself. She wants to tell him to hope and pray for Peter, she wants to believe that she should, too. "

"Yes?"

"Don't get your hopes up about Peter. Please." The ice swirls and washes over that flicker of hope, leaving her stomach a cold pit of bitterness. Ned doesn't answer for a while.

"Okay."

"Bye, Ned."

"Bye, Mrs Parker." The call ends from Ned's phone first and May stuffs her phone into her pocket, then stuffs her hands in after it. She stands there a moment longer in the empty lobby, listening to the tick of the clock. A machine still running after everything has ended. May wishes she had cogs. Cogs don't feel icy and ashy at the same time. Cogs don't hope and deny and live in limbo for days on end. _It's-five-o-clock_ , say the cogs in the machine that's still ticking, still running. _Pe-ter-is-gone_ , they snap, sharply. _This-is-the-end_.

She makes for the door and goes out onto the street, just willing for some air to clear her lungs and her head and the denial she's shrugged off. It's sunny, insultingly so, and warm outside, and there's noise coming from a few streets over, noise that she hasn't heard in days. Not cars, people. The last half of New York, yelling in the daylight. She crosses the empty street with purpose and walks to the corner, and a grief parade greets her with a wall of noise. There are crowds marching the streets, bigger than the pride marches, bigger than the women's marches, bigger than anything she's ever seen, people waving picket signs, banners, huge photographs and slogans. There's cameras and news reporters flashing and scribbling and videoing and talking, and the noise is cacophony. May flattens herself against the wall as they sweep past her, marching to God-knows-where, and she catches sight of a few slogans painted crudely onto huge unfitted sheets.

_You were supposed to protect us._

_Where were you, Avengers?_

_I want my Mom back._

Huge pictures on posts bob above the crowd: Captain America with the helmet painted blood red, Iron Man with the eyes sprayed out with black paint, Spider-Man with his thumbs up. She gets the gist, gets it like a punch to the stomach. The blame. The last of the solid people, marching to shift the guilt. She turns away from the parade, back onto the empty street, into the lobby where there's no one to see her, and there she sits down because her legs won't hold anymore, and she feels the gunshot-ash-shock-knife-wound once more. And there, she cries for Peter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> H'okay I lied and this 'oneshot' turned into a three-chapter fic I'm sorry (not really lol) 
> 
> I took it out of the series and yes I know I'm bad at finishing stuff dw I have half a chapter of GG sleeping in my docs so no worries lads

Pepper hates the waiting. With every bit of her soul. It's constant and wearying and every time she wakes up and the waiting is still going, she thinks a little bit of her dies. The worst thing is, she's gotten used to it. Since Afghanistan, she always had the mental preparation for the wait. The wait for Tony to win, to fall, to succeed, to end the fight. To come back home. Every day she grits every muscle and sinew in her body and sits down to work, think, figure out, and wait. She's not made for waiting around. She's made for going out and getting things done, preferably in an orderly fashion, but when the glowing woman who turned up without notice from outer space says she can go look for Tony, it's all Pepper can do not to break down in front of her and beg to go, too.

She's been waiting at the compound for nineteen days now, all day on the phone with government officials and news reporters and trying not to think of that sickening death toll. Trying not to think that Tony might be one of those numbers. James has been there with her for all of those days, dealing patiently with the numbers and the orders from the other people on the telephone, a careful shell closed over his worry. Pepper copies his demeanour, tries to pull up a semblance of her old calm, but the compound just stresses her out. It never used to. Maybe it's the murderous faces Thor is always making at the floor, or Steve's silence, or the way Bruce turns pale when someone bumps into him. Or maybe it's just the feel that Tony should be here, after the end of everything, because that's where he always is. He always wins, whether he thinks he has or not.

Natasha has the TV on all day, every day in the common room. Sometimes it grinds on Pepper's nerves. Sometimes it makes her want to curl into a ball and cry. But it seems to give Natasha some sort of a sense of purpose, so Pepper doesn't say a word. Natasha flits in and out of the compound, sometimes seemingly on a mission, sometimes drifting. She goes into the city a lot. Pepper can't even bear to think of doing that, but Natasha, when she does speak, says she goes to volunteer at shelters and help committees. Sometimes Steve goes with her, and Natasha returns alone. Sometimes she takes Bruce, and they come back even quieter than when they left.

It's hot outside today, and Pepper doesn't want to work. She doesn't want to wait. She barely even managed to get out of bed, but she does, and she drags herself to the shower, attempting to ignore the empty side of the bed, the cold space that had kept her awake all night. 

The shower is hot first, so she yanks the handle to the side and blisteringly cold water shoots from the nozzle. She stays under it until she starts to shiver, and then a little while more, to drive the worry and the panic from her brain.

When Pepper gets to the kitchen, Bruce is standing at the stove, nodding off as the kettle boils. She tries not to startle him, but the rustle of the cereal box from the cupboard jerks him from his stupor, and for a second he looks wildly terrified.

"Bruce?" She says gently. Usually just the sound of a familiar voice brings him back to earth, and it works; she sees his mind land back in his eyes with a bump.

"Morning," he says, when he recovers his voice, staring at the flicker of the gas-fed flames under the kettle.

"Did you sleep?" Pepper prompts. He blinks and shakes his head, and she sets the cereal box down on the counter by the oven. "Nightmares or thoughts?" She asks quietly, careful to keep her arms down, her movements slow. She's had enough experience of those red-rimmed eyes with Tony to know exactly what to do. Bruce taps his head with a bitter smile.

"One of those nights," he says.

"You spent it in the lab?"

"Roof."

"Can't have been comfortable," Pepper says lightly, reaching for the cereal box and pouring herself a bowl. He didn't seem so twitchy anymore. She was in the safe zone. Bruce hides his face by staring down at the oven, and Pepper thinks she sees the hint of a real smile. "Company?" She asks slyly, thinking of Natasha. Bruce's ears glow red and he shakes his head.

"Just me and Thor." It takes her a while. The kettle whistles and Bruce takes his tea away and _then_ she figures it out. _Just him and Thor._ She doesn't have time to celebrate or dwell on it, however, as the sound of the TV swells through the common room wall, yelling and arguing from the blasted machine. Pepper pours milk into her cereal and grabs a spoon, trying to ignore it, but she's really not in the mood today. It's a racket and it's driving her mad. Eventually, she sets down her spoon and makes her way to the common room, half ready to tell Natasha to turn it off, but as soon as she sets eyes on the screen, she freezes. The Iron Man helmet greets her, the glowing eyes sprayed out with black paint, waved like a flag above a crowd. It bobs hauntingly on a wooden post, like a medieval punishment. The motion steals the breath she was trying to take and she sways on the spot for a second as the helmet grins at her. A large hand fastens around her wrist and someone tugs her around, spinning her in a tight circle away from the TV, and when it's out of her eyeline, Steve pries the bowl of cereal from her hands and guides her to the sofa. 

"FRIDAY, mute the TV," he calls, and it goes silent, but not before someone shouts at the camera, clear through the noise of the crowd.

"Where were you, Avengers? Why didn't you save-"

"Pepper? Pepper, look at me." She knows she's sitting ramrod straight, but she can't relax her spine. She can't even move. The sprayed-out eyes of the helmet blot her eyesight. _Tony._ She wants to scream at the TV, to rail at the crowd smudging Tony's name. _He was there. He tried to save the world. He is a hero. Was a hero._ "Pepper." Steve's voice just barely reaches her, deep and solid, and she reaches for him, claws at his muscled forearm. He gives it to her and she latches on and when she's sure she's holding, gripping, tethering herself, she finally breaks down and bursts into tears. Her back slumps over and she screws her face up and really lets herself cry, throws her grief and panic and exhaustion into her tears, like a waterfall forcing its way through a door. Steve is huge and warm and he lets her cry herself dry against his chest, wetting his shirt. When she's finished, he just tightens his arms around her and doesn't let her go.

"We'll get him back," he says, the sound thrumming into Pepper's head like a trumpet. "I promise."

 _Don't make promises you can't keep._ Pepper thinks. She thinks of all Tony's promises. She thinks of skeletons in closets and babies and what her last words to Tony were, and all she wants to do is stay here and cry again.

†††††††††††††††††††††

The feeling of euphoric relief doesn't leave Pepper for days, not even when the others come back from the Garden with hard faces and heavy voices, even though she feels callous and insensitive. She's allowed a little relief, isn't she? She stays by Tony's bed until he wakes up, and when he does, the second thing she does is call Happy and James. The first thing she does is kiss him and sink her head into his shoulder, then kiss him there, then grab for his thin hand and press it to her cheek. He mumbles something about a warm welcome and pulls her onto the bed, where they lie in silence for a little while, pressed against each other, until she tells FRIDAY to get the others. Just before the door opens, he kisses her hair and pulls her head a little closer.

"I love you, Pep," he mumbles.

†††††††††††††††††††††

Pepper brings him soup and water and they talk about nothing, like spaceships and how nice it would be not to live in the city anymore. Happy brings him cheeseburgers, grinning balefully at Pepper's disapproving glares. James tells him jokes and stories and Tony laughs until he coughs. 

"This is why I left y'on Earth, Rhodey" Tony mumbles, after a comical relay of James' lengthy conversations with Secretary Ross. "You do dumb shit." 

Then James tells him what happened at the Garden, and Pepper tries not to listen and Tony nods like he's just been given a death sentence. He then stares at the opposite wall for an hour, until they leave him to grieve in private. James practically has to drag Pepper from the room, and then she goes to her room and cries for Tony until Natasha knocks on her door to tell her that Tony's out of bed.

Pepper flings the door open, but Natasha is already gone. She passes Thor and Bruce on her way to Tony's room, and Thor's face is the colour of milk. He's holding a bottle and Bruce seems to be pleading with him, but they don't hear her go by. Against her better instincts, she carries on walking. Through everything she hears of that conversation, Thor doesn't speak once.

Tony is walking with his arms held on either side by Happy and James, and his haggard face splits in a grin when he sees Pepper.

"Heya Pep. I am no longer invalid," he announces, and he tries to take a bow and almost falls. James and Happy yank him up again.

"This is payback for all that time you spent having to drag me around this compound, isn't it?" James grunts as he slings Tony's arm over his shoulders. The two men share some incomprehensible look, gratitude and relief. Then Tony's knees buckle and Happy grabs his legs and carries him bridal style back to the bed. Tony pats Happy's chest when he sets him down.

"Thank you, dear," he says, settling himself back against the pillows. "Heya, Nat." Everyone turns around to see Natasha leaning on the doorway, arms crossed. She gives Tony the slightest smile, like it's a struggle. Most likely it is.

"Nebula said she's coming to see you," she says, and then she turns to go.

"Nat, come on in," Pepper calls after her. Natasha pauses in the hallway, then turns back around and walks into the room with her lip between her teeth and her hands in her pockets. James looks between Natasha and Tony, and Happy starts rearranging Tony's pillows; they're all thinking the same things. Pepper smiles and turns back to Tony, distantly wondering if she should have just let Natasha go. But then she catches sight of Tony's face, and all her distant wonderings gather into a ball and drop into her stomach with a splash. "Tony? Honey?" He looks positively grey. Pepper grabs his hand and he stares at her, his eyes ghoulish and awful.

"Peter," he says, simply. Pepper's heartstrings seem to snap, all at once, and she can feel her eyes wetting.

"No, Tony. He didn't make it back." The words scrape like sandpaper on her tongue, stick to her teeth and all down her throat and she chokes back tears. But Tony shakes his head.

"His aunt. If she's- May Parker. We gotta tell her. If she's-"

"Okay," Pepper soothes, suddenly relieved. She doesn't want a delirious episode, not like the last one, where Tony refused to sleep and started sobbing at the bedpost, completely convinced it was Peter. "We'll tell her." The relief vanishes when she realises what she's saying. Breaking the news to a widow who's been waiting for days for her nephew to come home. Who might have hoped he'd been spared.

"Now," Tony insists, suddenly loud, pushing himself up from the bed. James presses a hand to his chest and easily puts him back down again.

"Tony, okay, it's okay. We'll tell her," he says. "You're really sick, just lie down."

"Nah." Tony shakes his head back and forth like he's trying to unstick his brain. He grabs Happy's broad shoulder and tries to use him as a crutch. "I gotta- I gotta tell her. It's gotta be me-"

"Tony you can't even walk," Happy says, pushing Tony back into the mattress with ease. Tony grabs for Pepper's hand and yanks her towards him, his eyes mirrored and wide.

"Honey, lie down, please," she begs him, leaning over him, pushing her own tears away. He fights against her for a second and then he relaxes completely and his eyes glaze over a little.

"If she's still- it's gotta...be...me…" And then he blacks out. They all pause for a second. James checks his heartbeat and nods, and Pepper lets out a sigh.

"God, he's never gonna stop giving me heart skips, is he?"

"Well, he might if you never let him outta your sight again," Happy replies. Pepper scoffs.

"Believe me, he's not going anywhere without me for the next forty years at _least_ ," she tuts. There's another silence.

"We gotta tell her," James says quietly.

"I'll do it," Natasha says from behind them, right on the heels of James's sentence. They all turn around and Pepper gives her a look.

"No, Nat-"

"No, I will. I'll do it," she repeats. "What's her address?" None of them answer. Pepper has it ready on her tongue, but she won't let Natasha go. She's done enough already and she doesn't need another burden. Natasha waits for a second, then turns to leave. "Alright, I'll find it," she calls back. There's a hiatus. Then Happy grumbles something under his breath and takes off after her.

"I'm coming," he calls.

"No," they hear Natasha say.

"Yup."

"No."

"Yuh-huh." There's yet another pause, and Pepper and James exchange glances.

"Harold-"

"I'm coming. What, you gonna strangle me again?"

"I can do it by myself."

"Yeah, but you don't have to." This time, she doesn't argue back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter haha idk why I'm writing this it's depressing
> 
> I hope u liked it :)
> 
> Pls review (or don't I can't really tell u what to do but pls review in comments)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A friend and a healing for May Parker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently 96% of Americans drive automatic cars and that's very weird to me I've never even been in an automatic.  
> Thus I do not know how they work, so I decided Natasha drives a manual car: she's European anyways so it's fine...right?

The car ride is almost utterly silent, pocked with Happy's duosyllabic directions, and Natasha is glad for it. The road snaking away beneath them sands down the image that hangs in her mind, Tony's grey face and sunken eyes, twisted in grief and regret. She imagines it as a photograph, the corners rounding, the edges eaten away, until the image is just shreds of chemically sensitized paper. 

"Left turn," Happy says, gesturing at the road ahead. Natasha focuses too much on the brake, the gear change, the turn of the wheel. She walls the action against the inside of her head, uses it to paper over her thoughts. It's one of the things she does best.

"What are we gonna say to her?" Happy asks quietly, looking over at her. Natasha dips her head forward and the straight sheets of her hair fall like an iron curtain between her eyes and Happy's soft glance. She doesn't know what she'll say. It's not like she's readily emotionally available. Happy's still waiting for an answer. They drive in silence.

Queens is too quiet. The rumble of the engine seems to cloak the entire street as Natasha crawls the car down, giving Happy a chance to spot the building. They'd seen a 'Delmar's Deli & Grill' a few blocks back, the windows empty and the lights still burning, even in the middle of the day. There's a wreckage of a car stuffed through a shop front a little further on and Happy determinedly stares away from it, but Natasha lets the picture burn into her brain. They drive close enough to see a little pile of dust in the driver's seat, and Happy's seatbelt creaks as he tenses. Natasha watches the wreckage through the rearview mirror until it's out of sight.

"It's that one," Happy says, pointing over at the tall building to Natasha's left. There's no cars parked outside, no passers-by. She rides up onto the curbside and kills the engine, undoing her seatbelt.

"I got this," she says, voice rough from the long drive's disuse. "You stay in the car." Happy reaches for his seatbelt with a huff.

"I'm not staying in the car." Natasha ignores him. "Look, I'm not letting you go in there alone," he says. His seatbelt jams for a second and Natasha locks the passenger side door discreetly. 

"You wanna help?" She challenges. "Keep the car running." He manages to unclip his seatbelt and reaches for his door, yanks on it two, three times, and then looks up and glares at Natasha. She shuts the other door on him and locks it. She doesn't stay to see the pout she knows he's giving her.

†††††††††††††††††††††

Third floor, fourth door on the left. She passes a hall phone, half off its hook, and she crunches the keys in her hand. The metal bites her palms and the keychain jingles in lieu of the noises that this building should be making: footsteps and laughter and the drone of TVs. She reaches May Parker's door and builds her nerve. Waits. Papers over the wreckage of the car and Pepper's soft concern and the grief parade, screaming at her from the TV. She builds over it, brick by brick. She cements it in. And then she raises her fist and knocks on the door.

May Parker obviously isn't expecting visitors, because she opens the door with caution, on the chain.

"Who is it?" She asks through the slot of the doorway. Natasha smiles at her.

"Mrs Parker? I'm Natasha, I'm an associate of Mr Stark's." May shuts the door and fiddles with the chain for a second. A second too long. She's preparing herself. The door opens wide and the two women stare at each other for a moment, opposite sides of a doorway, opposite sides of a life.

"Do you want to come in?" May asks, almost tentatively. She's quite a bit taller than Natasha: longer and willowy. Natasha manages to smile carefully as May directs her into the apartment. It's tidy. Empty of life. There's a tiny TV on the wall opposite a ragged couch; they both look like they've been dragged from an alley dump. May leans against the back of the couch and Natasha stands awkwardly in the open space in front of May. 

There's a silence, and Natasha is hyper aware of every second that ticks by. How does she start?

"This is about your nephew, Peter," Natasha says, and May's stature wilts ever so slightly. Then she stiffens herself, turns her spine to steel, eyes to rock. If it were anyone but Natasha, they wouldn't have noticed the changes. "I'm afraid he did not come back from space with Mr Stark. He died in the Snap." She barely pauses between sentences, rushing to spit the words out into the air, to speed the moment up, to deal the pain. And now she will watch as May Parker's world crashes down around her ears.

May stares for a long while, not at Natasha. At the space between them. Natasha imagines that May's reading the words that Natasha spread out before them. The silence carries, like solid smoke. Finally, May nods, accepting it, but her eyes are too wide and her chin is too high.

"Thank you," she says, the words a whisper. What a strange sentiment. May's not crying yet, but her lashes are shining wet. Natasha feels like her head is blown too big, dizzy, heavy. She reaches for May's arm to comfort her, and as soon as her hand lands, May bursts into tears. Real tears. Death tears. Pepper-watching-the-grief-parade-tears. Natasha pulls the other woman in for a hug and May clings to her, her entire body wracking with sobs. It doesn't seem to matter that they're less than acquaintances, less even than strangers, and May doesn't let go for a long, long while. May holds her like Natasha hugged Steve on the jet ride home, like Clint held her when she'd found her parents' graves, like Pepper clung to Steve in front of the muted TV. 

When May does release Natasha, her whole face is red and wet and streaming, and she turns away, embarrassed, hiccuping ever so slightly. Natasha digs in her pocket for a tissue and silently guides May to the tattered couch, where she sits and presses the tissue to her nose and shivers. They sit together as May trembles and sniffs, and Natasha waits for her. No seconds are passing now. Time is honey, black, broken molasses dripping like tears through the world's hourglass. Natasha is glad for her concreted walls. Without them, she'd be crying by now, too.

Minutes, maybe hours later, May's tears seem to dry out. She lets out one last staggered breath and Natasha folds May's hand in her own; May's fingers are long and cold and trembling like tissue paper.

"Mrs Parker, please call me if there's anything I can do for you," Natasha says, scouring her pockets for a pen and paper. She scribbles down her number, the one that will call the mobile in her room, not the one in her bag in the car. She hands the paper to May and smiles as softly and encouragingly as she can. "I am so sorry about Peter." May rubs the paper between her fingers and smiles back at Natasha with red-rimmed eyes.

"Don't be. Thank you, Natasha." They look at each other for a long while. Teary and blank. Grieving and shuttered. Opposite sides of a life. 

†††††††††††††††††††††

Funnily enough, Happy has actually kept the car running. Natasha unlocks the door and gets in, ignoring the look he's giving her. She wraps her fingers around the smooth curve of the wheel and releases her own staggered breath, hissing air through her teeth. Air through the cracks in her papered-over head. Then she shifts the car into gear and starts to drive.

Happy doesn't talk the whole way back to the compound. It's a low, golden evening when Natasha eases the car back into the garage, and she can hear Happy's stomach grumbling. They didn't stop on the way back. Natasha's gas tank is deep and she fills it regularly, so there was no need. Happy bounds out of the car and stretches his legs, groaning at the creak in his knees, and Natasha locks the doors and makes for the stairs without a word. Wisely, Happy doesn't try to follow or talk to her, and she makes it all the way to her room, slipping easily past Steve and Bruce and Thor like a wraith in the wind.

†††††††††††††††††††††

May doesn't expect to ever see Natasha again, and she keeps working to ward away the grief and the dark, so when she finds a heated meal left outside the apartment door at eleven at night, she can't fathom who it might be from. A kindly neighbour? There's a note on the box and she bends to read it, keys still in the door's lock.

_I was in town. N_

No one in New York is worried about other people. Everyone has ghosts now, and no one has time to cook each other meals. May wonders if Natasha has ghosts. She wonders if she suffers under her pale, blank expression, if she's crying beneath her careful smile. May eats the meal: a small lasagne, and it tastes so much better than the takeaway she's been living off. She calls Natasha, who doesn't pick up, so May leaves a voicemail thanking her for the food. She goes to bed and sinks into her lonely nightmares, until her alarm drags her from the depths and she hauls herself back to work. 

She's tired of the repetition by now: work, work, walk home, sleep. Sometimes she forgets things, like water and socks, and sometimes she sits on the couch or the floor and stares at nothing, thinking of Peter's death. She remembers doing all this when Ben died, and though it doesn't hurt any less and the rooms she walks through feel just as empty, she likes to think she's doing better. Sometimes there's dipping days, where she screams into her pillow or can't feel her own heartbeat and has to press herself to the cold wall to feel like she's still living. Sometimes there's peaking days, where Natasha answers her voicemails with reassurance and questions, and the rising sun hits May's face just right on the walk to work. She never sees the neighbours: old Mr Triad and his dog, the rowdy Abelardo family, destitute dance instructor Kelly and her husband. She doesn't even know if any of them survived, and she feels a cringe in her solar plexus every time she thinks of how bright and loud the building used to be. Now it's cold walls and silent air and an unspoken grief.

Two of the nurses in the ER lost their spouses, and they've been grey faced since it happened. May hasn't yet mentioned about Peter when she's asked, softly, by the others, because she doesn't know if the words will slash her insides as they come up, and leave her bleeding. So she keeps it to herself, and Natasha, and Tony Stark, she supposes. The TV heralds and celebrates Stark's return from space, and then mourns the death of Spider-Man, but May doesn't join them. She's mourning someone else.

When Tony freaking Stark turns up at her door three weeks after Natasha broke the news, May thinks she has an aneurysm. A year and a half ago, he was sitting in her living room and eating her banana bread with a black eye, and now he's here again. To soften the blow? To apologise for not keeping her nephew safe? He's on crutches, and she stares him down, fuzzy with shock. And then she lets him in and they talk, just talk. He tells her about a program he's funding, to help the bereaved and the injured, and she tells him about the jam-packed ER, and he tells her about a new restaurant just opening up on 16th Street that he saw driving by. It's Thai, and she tells him how much Peter used to love Thai. He pauses for a second, then stands and holds out his arm like an old-timey gentleman.

"In memoriam?" He asks solemnly. May thinks she might start crying again, or maybe she'll sit there with ice in her stomach and stare at the offered arm. Instead, she stands and takes it.

"It's what he would have wanted," she jokes, pushing back a wash of emotion. So they sit in the quiet restaurant on 16th Street and eat Thai, and across from her, it's not Peter sheepishly asking for a new backpack. It's not her nephew grinning with an ' _I think he larbs you,_ '. It's not a sixteen year old boy who she's watched grow up, who couldn't step down from picking fights with the bullying kids, who couldn't step down from Spider-Man's responsibility, even though it sent him to Washington, to thirty thousand feet above the ground, to freaking space. It's not Peter. It's Tony, and it's a step towards healing for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's ended! I finally finished something! Another chapter of GG is (sort of) in the works!  
> Hope u liked x

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda wanna do a Thor/Bruce one shot??
> 
> Anyways hope u enjoyed it, reviewers and lurkers alike :)


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